


A Better Place

by leah k (blinkiesays)



Category: Ghost World (2001)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-12-01
Updated: 2004-12-01
Packaged: 2017-11-02 02:36:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/364055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blinkiesays/pseuds/leah%20k
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Becky still lives in the same apartment, the one that they were going to get together, and Enid thinks it's maybe a sign.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Better Place

**Author's Note:**

> December 2004
> 
> Written for carolinecrane in the 2004 [Yuletide](http://yuletidetreasure.org/) Fic Exchange

Becky still lives in the same apartment, the one that they were going to get together, and Enid thinks it's maybe a sign. She spends a good 10 minutes in front of the doorbell that still reads Doppelmeyer/Coleslaw, but the main door's propped open with a phonebook from 1987, so she doesn't have to get buzzed in. Inside, by the mailboxes, there's a yellowing piece of paper stapled-gunned to a bulletin board with Enid's senior picture and the words _"Have you seen this girl?"_ underneath it in big, block lettering. It's completely a sign. Completely.

Enid knocks before letting herself think about it, starts to walk away, comes back, and decides definitely to walk away when the door opens and she hears someone say her name.

* * *

She never really ended up staying anyplace for more than six months at a stretch. Portland was full of the kind of people she was trying to get away from, she couldn't find a job in Seattle, and Denver was too cold. She'd lost fifty pounds and was down to $30 by the time she got to Phoenix. It was the only place things seemed to fall together right.

She worked in a used-record store, lived in a vegan co-op, wore tie-dye halter-tops and flip-flops, dreaded her hair and got the worst sunburn she'd ever had in her life. It was the closest she'd come to being completely, genuinely happy.

There was a girl in the co-op, Samantha, who insisted that Enid was really a lesbian and just hadn't figured it out yet. Sam also insisted on helping her figure it out.

"You should tell her," she'd say, drinking coffee naked in the kitchen, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette.

"Tell who?" Enid said once, the first time.

"Hell, it's not like I know her name or anything. _The girl you left behind._ The one you're in love with." She always said everything in a way that made Enid crazy, like she knew everything, like she'd seen this movie a dozen times already.

"What the fuck do you know?" Enid said, getting angry, not thinking.

"Not much," she said, blowing a smoke-ring and smiling like she'd won something. "You should tell her."

"Fuck you," Enid said, and said every morning after that until she couldn't take it anymore and found herself on a bus to Texas.

* * *

"Enid?"

She turns around and Rebecca's older. Its not much, and its not bad, its just different enough she has to pause for a minute. Enid forgets sometimes, that when she leaves a place, it doesn't stand still, holding its breath and waiting for her to come back. She forgets that people change when she's not looking.

"God, Becky." She says, shocked by how strange her voice sounds. "Hey."

There's a moment where Becky says her name, " _Enid_ ", and she's not sure Becky isn't going to slap her, but then she's being hugged so hard she can feel her ribs creaking together.

"You're such a jackass, you know that?" Becky says, and she's crying and angry but not letting go. "I really _really_ hate you. God, you're so fucking selfish. Don't you ever, ever do that to us again. Ever."

* * *

In Austin she gets a job as a waitress in a café near what was once the poorest part of town. She wears comfortable shoes and an apron covered in swirls of old oil-paints, neon-pink handprints, and blurry stencils that read "no blood for oil" and "stop buying old growth trees!" The first thing she did when she got to Texas was shave her head, and once her hair was long enough to put up in a ponytail, she bleached it to match the quality of light. She would catch her reflection in a car window every once in a while, and turn around looking for someone who wasn't there.

She spent a lot of time at garage sales, and went to a couple estate sales before the idea of buying things from dead people creeped her out too much. At the last one she went to, she ended up paying two dollars for 150 postcards with pictures of almost everything, frogs and mosques and oranges, on one side and nothing on the other. She'd write on one every once in a while, to Becky, her dad, Josh, and not send it. _"Dear Becky. Sometimes I'm eating lunch and I'll see this completely remarkably freakish guy and I'll look up to point him out to you and you're not there."_

Sometimes, she'd buy old paintings for the canvas and frame and paint giant out-of-proportion cartoons of people she saw around the city in fifty-cent housepaint. Sometimes the manager would put them up in the café and once some trust-fund kid bought one for $500. She put away half of it in an envelope labeled "train-ticket home" and didn't think too hard about why.

* * *

Becky says she looks tired and makes her come in for a cup of coffee and Enid is a lot more confused and overwhelmed than she thought she'd be.

"If you had come back two years ago," Becky says as she hands Enid a chipped green mug, "God, I was so angry. At you. I could have killed you. Your Dad thought you'd been kidnapped or something, but I knew you'd just gone. But then last year maybe, I guess I just missed you more than I hated you, you know? It's good to see you."

She doesn't know what to say, but Becky picks up the silence effortlessly and starts talking about who died, who got pregnant, who got married to who, the everyday life that she missed.

In Chicago, she used to think about calling, to say _"hi, how are you, I'm not dead."_ But it wouldn't have been enough. She didn't miss Becky's voice when she was gone, but the easy way they had of talking to each other or not talking to each other. When all she had was the possibility of hearing Becky's voice, what she missed most was being quiet together. Everything she left behind and it was small stupid things that she couldn't live without. The peppermint and sandalwood way Becky's hair smelled. The way she held coffee cups, like something infinitely precious.

"I was always running," Enid says before she knows she's going to. Becky nods. "Because you can't just disappear. You have to _go_ somewhere. And once get there, you know your boss or your neighbors and you're _there_ , and it isn't any better. I thought, I don't know, if I left I could ignore this thing that happened to you and me but I just missed you. It was so stupid. Everything." She sighs, looks away, stares at the floor.

When Enid looks up, Becky is looking at her and smiling. Enid watches the way her fingers are wrapped around her mug, the soft way she lifts it to her lips.

"Sure," Becky says. "I get that. But you gotta stop sometime." She pauses, hair the color of Texas sunlight falling in front of her eyes. "Are you, hm, were you going to be in town for long?" Enid shrugs. "Because, um, I was supposed to have this roommate, but she completely bailed on me."

Enid almost smiles and says. "Sounds like a bitch."

Becky laughs a little, says, "oh, _totally_."

* * *

Enid gets a job from her father that she hates, but she comes home to the same thing every night. Things aren't exactly the way they were, Becky has a Real Job that makes her look greyed-out and tired at the end of the day. Josh moved to Sacramento and now makes more money than god. The whole town looks different and even the things that haven't really changed are strange in a way she can't place.

She writes postcards that no one sees that say _"I was looking for you everywhere, and you were here all the time. I keep looking for you in places you could never be."_

Sometimes she stops for a long time outside the train station, looking at the cars headed somewhere, but every time she looks at a map, all the cities look the same. Not here, not what you're looking for.


End file.
